And to the Sea as Happily Dost Haste

 To The Nile
by John Keats

Son of the old Moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing's inward span:
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! They surely do;
'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew
Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste
The pleasant sunrise. Green isles hast thou too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.

Links of Note

 * Ed Simon, Close Reading Bad Poetry, at "3 Quarks Daily"

* Emanuel Rutten, A Modal-Epistemic Argument for the Existence of God (PDF)

* Brad Skow, The Grotesque in Flannery O'Connor, at "Mostly Aesthetics"

* Michael Yuen, Kant on Hope's Value and Misanthropy (PDF)

* Brendan Hodge, Is migration padding the USCCB 'bottom line'?, at "The Pillar"

* Patrik Engisch, Creativity, Imagination, and the Culinary Arts (PDF)

* Jesper Kallestrup, Knowledge-Qua in Groups

* Dan Williams, The world outside and the pictures in our heads, at "Conspicuous Cognition"

* Verena Wagner, Committing to Indecision: A Taxonomy of Suspension of Judgment (PDF)

* Philip D. Bunn, Reflecting on the AI Crisis in Higher Education, at "Fusion"

* Luis F. Bartolo Alegre, Was Aristotle a non-classical logician? (PDF)

* Don A. Howard and Marco Giovanelli, Einstein's Philosophy of Science, at the SEP

* Ashley Purdy, Shared Tastes: Similiarity in Aristotelian Character Friendship (PDF)

* Miriam, The Warehouse of Good Intentions: On Folly and Friendship, at "Between Monk and Myrmidon"

* John T. Maier, The Agentive Modalities (PDF)

* J. B. Manchak, The universe is unknowable from within it

How to Remember

ST 2-2.49.1 ad 2, my rough translation; the Dominican Fathers translation is here. Of course, these are relevant to more than just memorizing things; they are, to take just one example, part of how we become thoughtful (i.e., keep important things in mind), including being mindful of God and our fellow human beings. The references to Cicero are actually to the Rhetorica ad Herennium, perhaps the most influential rhetorical handbook of all time, which is no longer attributed to Cicero. Sollicitudo, here translated as 'care', is one of the major acts of the virtue of prudence; it could also be translated as 'vigilance', 'watchfulness', or, for that matter, 'solicitude'; it is associated with ingenuity and alertness.

 

******

To the second it must be said that just as we have an aptitude for prudence from our nature, but its completion comes through practice or grace, as Tully says in his Rhetoric, so too memory not only derives from nature, but is made greater by art or diligence (industriae).

And there are four ways by which a man progresses in remembering well. The first of which is that he who wishes to remember something should take some likeness appropriate to it, but not wholly appropriate, because that which is inappropriate is more wondered-at, and so engages the soul more, and more vehemently. And this is why we see that in childhood we remember more of what we saw. Now the need for discovering these likenesses or images is because simple and intellectual dispositions (intentiones simplices et spirituales) easily escape the soul unless they are bound to some corporeal likeness, because human cognition has greater power over sensibles. Therefore the memorative [power] is placed in the sensitive part.

Secondly, whatever a man wants to remember he ought to hold in his attention (consideratione) and organize (ordinate disponat) so that he may proceed easily from one memory to another. Thus the Philosopher says, in the book De Mem., From a commonplace (a locis) we seem to remember something, because we go swiftly from one to the other.

Thirdly, a man ought to have care (sollicitudinem) and concern (affectum) about the things he wants to remember, because the more something makes an impression on the soul, the less it escapes it. Thus Tully says in his Rhetoric that care (sollicitudo) conserves the features of representations (simulacrorum figuras) whole.

Fourthly, one ought to meditate frequently on what one wants to remember. Thus the Philosopher says in the book De Mem. that meditations save memory, because, as is said in the same book, custom is like nature. Thus what we often apprehend (intelligimus) we quickly remember, as it were proceeding by natural order from one to the other.

Beyond Death's Starry West

 Intercessional
by Geoffrey Bache Smith 

 There is a place where voices
Of great guns do not come,
Where rifle, mine, and mortar
For evermore are dumb:
Where there is only silence,
And peace eternal and rest,
Set somewhere in the quiet isles
Beyond Death’s starry West.
O God, the God of battles,
To us who intercede,
Give only strength to follow
Until there’s no more need,
And grant us at that ending
Of the unkindly quest
To come unto the quiet isles
Beyond Death’s starry West.

Soft as the Falling of Wind-Scattered Grain

A Rain Sonnet
by Nina Frances Layard 

And all the dank hair of the hurrying rain,
 Flung backward by the wind, did stream and fly
 Across the anxious forehead of the sky,
 And rattling lashed my shaken window-pane
 With sudden spotted sounds, that yet again
 Sink to a lighter fingering, or die
 Into a tinkling treble by-and-by,
 Soft as the falling of wind-scattered grain.

 
 So is my sorrow as the streaming drift,
 That from the mighty shoulders of a cloud
 Is shaken back and tangled in the blast;
 So is my dreadful sorrow, but I lift
 A trembling hand to God and cry aloud
 That He shall make it music at the last.

Hypagete kai Ekcheete

 And I heard a loud sound from the fane saying to the seven messengers: Depart, and pour forth the seven cups of God's spiritedness upon the land. 

And the first went off and poured forth his cup upon the land and there began to be a fester, bad and miserable, on the human beings having the stamp of the beast and those prostrating before its image.

And the second poured forth his cup upon the sea, and there began to  be blood like a corpse's, and every living spirit that was in the sea died.

And the third poured forth his cup upon the rivers and the fountains of water, and there began to be blood. 

And I heard the messenger of the waters saying, Just you are, Is-Being and Was-Being, Godly, for you have decided these things, for the blood of the consecrated and the prophets they have poured forth, and you have given them blood to drink; they are deserving. 

And I heard the altar saying, Certainly, Lord God All-Ruler, your judgments [are] truthful and just.

And the fourth poured forth his cup upon the sun, and there was given it the burning of human beings with fire. And the human beings were burned with a great glow, and they blasphemed the Name of God, the One having authority over these afflictions, and they did not repent to give him glory.

And the fifth poured forth his cup upon the seat of the beast, and its empire began to be blinded, and they were chewing their tongues from the toil, and they blasphemed the God of heaven from their toils and from their festers, and they did not repent from their deeds.

And the sixth poured forth his cup upon the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried, so that the way might be prepared for the emperors of the dawning sun.

And I saw from the wyrm's mouth, and from the beast's mouth, and from the pseudo-prophet's mouth, three unclean spirits, like frogs, for they are daimonic spirits making signs, which go forth to the emperors of the whole world, to gather them for the war of the great day of God All-Ruler.

[Revelation 16:1-14, my rough translation. Some old versions do not have the "from the fane/temple/shrine/sanctuary" in the first verse. In verse five, not all sources have the "Lord". In verse twelve, "of the dawning sun" is often translated as a poetic expression for "from the east".

The word I've translated 'cup' is phiale (hence the KJV transliteration, "vial"), which is often translated as "bowl". The latter is perhaps technically the stricter translation, but either works; a phiale would have been a broad, shallow bowl used for libation-prayers (which were common in the household piety of the Roman empire), but the term is also often used for any cup or bowl that is used in sacrifices, especially for catching blood. It's this sacrificial character that is behind the word here. The bowls/cups are called the cups/bowls of God's thymos. This is often translated as 'wrath', and it could mean something like that, but it's not the usual word for 'wrath'. It's a much broader word in fact: a spirited horse has a lot of thymos, not because it is wrathful but because it is hard to break; if you have high spirits, you have a lot of thymos; your thymos is the part of you that seeks not ease and pleasure but challenge and victory. My guess is that it is here standing for something like what in Medieval Hebrew is called hod, glory/splendor/majesty, or netzach, perpetuity/durability/victoriousness: that is, the bowls are the bowls of the unconquerability of God.

The address to God by the angel of the waters is interesting: Being (ho on) and Having-Been (ho en) have been previously used (Rv. 11:17) with Coming (ho erchomenos); here, however, they are joined with ho hosios, which means 'godly, pious, righteous, holy'.

I have translated with the word 'daimonic' rather than 'demonic', because I think the older meaning of daimonion may partly be in view -- a daemon is an intermediary between gods and men. The dragon, beast, and false prophet are setting themselves up against God, as if they were divine, and the unclean spirits are their 'daemons'. 

Each of the plagues seems to involve a form of poetic justice; those who receive the stamp (charagma, related to the word character) of the beast receive a wound; those who pour out the blood of the saints receive blood to drink, the lordship of the beast is afflicted with toil in darkness/blindness. The sea is afflicted because the beast comes from the sea.]

Except, Indeed, that He Was Lean and Skinny

Hobbes, but why, or on what principle, I never could understand, was not murdered. This was a capital oversight of the professional men in the seventeenth century; because in every light he was a fine subject for murder, except, indeed, that he was lean and skinny; for I can prove that he had money, and (what is very funny,) he had no right to make the least resistance; for, according to himself, irresistible power creates the very highest species of right, so that it is rebellion of the blackest die to refuse to be murdered, when a competent force appears to murder you. However, gentlemen, though he was not murdered, I am happy to assure you that (by his own account) he was three times very near being murdered. 

 Thomas de Quincey, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, in Miscellaneous Essays. Of course, it is not really what Thomas Hobbes says about "competent force" trying to murder you; Hobbes thinks you have a right to self-defense in the face of an immediate attempt to cause your death. But I, too, have wondered why, or on what principle, Hobbes was not murdered.